New Airplanes?
 

For those who have no home life like myself and watch the QRC podcast on the hub, they mentioned us growing our fleet with more UAX airplanes, and an additional 16+ next year not all under the United Express fleet. Realistically, is it safe to assume they are going to add to the Delta fleet? These old JQs are tired and could use a break, and I’d be shocked if we grew the AA side 175 fleet as their WO’s like Piedmont and Envoy have a large number on order.

also, four airplanes strictly for charters in the winter months. Is there that high of demand for 76 seat charters?

curious everyone’s thoughts

Nah, Delta's regional fleet is maxed out via scope. No growth there.

Welllll kinda sorta, DL connection lost three hulls this year, and OO is growing on the Delta side. I’m sure there’s room for growth somewhere, especially when they want to work us more but our Delta E75 fleet is extremely busy. If you look at the fleet pages in the hub there’s almost no buffer. I don’t know the exact number of 76 seat jets under the Delta Connection Banner, but according to their last contract it cannot exceed 223.

in their contract there’s a different section for 70 seat airframes, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do the trick that Mesa did with United and configure a few of their E175s into a 70 seat config. Especially as the old 170s show their age more and more each day.

Have you noticed the old UA “RW”s being repainted in AA colors? Maybe those are the “new” planes being added to the non-UA fleets 🤣

Well on that note, it’s a possibility they could configure the new 175s to 70 seats to replace those old DL 170s. There’s like what, 12ish? It’s always such a treat having 4 legs a day in those bad boys /s

Not sure if this really adds much to the conversation, but I saw 2 of those planes at the IMC while flying other repos recently. They were both RW tails. So old 170s being repainted.

nooo more 170 united flyin for uss

hope were gettin new onez

We’ve gotten 4 new UA 175s in the last 30 days, but those 170s aren’t going anywhere. You’ll see them on your next IND DCA turn with new paint

They've also been getting turned into charter planes (see 638RW and 641RW).

college team charters are huge business, and our jets competes very well against the charter E145’s and next size up was B373…. It’s a good niche to fill. Perfect plane for it. Race teams also.
I’d like to see them pick up some domestic DOD flying. I’ve seen my share of 767’s flying 40-60 troops from one base to another domestically… very very common. We’d nail that market on price too.